Home Was Never a Place

Be the home your heart is craving for.

For a long time, I thought home was a place I could return to.

I didn’t realize until I lost it, that home had never been a place at all.

When my grandmother passed away, something deeper than grief cracked open inside me. I remember walking into her apartment afterward — the same rooms, the same furniture, the same familiar things — and feeling a quiet but undeniable truth land in my body.

It wasn’t home anymore.

The apartment was just an apartment. The things were just things.

And that’s when I understood: the feeling of home had never lived in the walls. It had lived in her.

With her, I didn’t have to perform. I didn’t have to explain myself. I didn’t have to be productive, upbeat, strong, or “on.”

We could sit in silence and watch her Spanish series. Talk about her life when she was younger. Laugh. Rest. Be.

Her presence was grounding. Warm. Real.

She was safety — not because she tried to be, but because she was herself.

Around the same time, my body was already on the edge of burnout. Losing her felt like losing the one place where I could truly exhale. And when she was gone, it felt like the ground beneath me disappeared too.

That season stripped everything away.

And slowly, painfully, honestly… it showed me something I had never been taught:

If home had lived in her presence —then home was something that could be embodied.

Not owned. Not visited. Not earned. But carried.

Somewhere in that quiet unraveling, a longing formed — not to replace what I had lost, but to become what I had felt.

To build that same sense of safety within myself. To move through the world without the constant armor. To create a life — and later, a home — where softness was allowed.

Not perfectly. Not all the time. But intentionally.

Years later, my child said something that stopped me in my tracks:

“Mom… this place feels like home.”

Not because of the walls. Not because of how it looks. But because of how it feels.

And in that moment, I knew: something had come full circle.

Home isn’t something we find. It’s something we become.

It’s the permission to be real. To rest without guilt. To exist without constantly proving our worth.

If you’ve ever felt like you don’t quite belong anywhere…

If you’ve ever longed for a place where you could finally soften…

If you’ve ever felt homesick without knowing where “home” is…

Maybe you’re not meant to go back. Maybe you’re meant to carry it forward.

What if the home you’re longing for is already trying to live through you?

When you stop searching for home outside yourself, your life begins to soften.

Do you feel any of this?

See it as your sign that it´s time <3

Terese

She Elevate - where we support women design and build a life aligned with who you really are.